Sitting up in their little eyrie just under Botmaskop on the Helshoogte Pass in the Stellenbosch Wine Appellation, the vineyards, restaurants and wine tasting rooms are well worth the visit. The artworks alone are worth seeing. The sublime wines well worth taking home and the Delaire Graff and Indochine Restaurants, worth all the awards they have won. The Delaire Graff Banghoek Reserve Chardonnay 2017 is a wine, the taste of which you will remember for a long time.

Morné Vrey much awarded Winemaker at Delaire Graff

The grapes for the Delaire Graff Banghoek Reserve Chardonnay 2017 come from the estate’s own mountain vineyards. The harvesting is done early in the morning, with multiple passes to ensure the full flavour spectrum during the period of ideal ripeness. This makes sure that award winning winemaker Morné Vrey and his team get maximum flavour, a good sugar concentration and a counterbalance of fresh crisp acidity. Once in the cellar, the bunches are carefully sorted to make sure that only the best bunches go through to the press for whole bunch pressing. This is a gentler form on extraction where the best of what the grape has to offer goes through to the 225 litre barrels of French oak, 40% of which were new, the remainder previous fill. After 14 months in the barrels, the wine is prepared for bottling.

It looks like
Bottled under screw cap in a Burgundy shaped bottle with the elegant Delaire Graff livery. In the glass, it is a gem bright pale golden straw.

Chardonnay grapes ripening on the vine

It smells like
Apart from the sweet tropical limes, ripe white fleshed peaches and oak spice.

It tastes like
Generously fruited with citrus and ripe stonefruit with an undertow of melon and also, vanilla from the oak barrels. Crisp and fresh, as no lees stirring or malolactic fermentation took place. Very satisfying full mid palate and a slowly waning aftertaste.

Smoked Angelfish Paté with korreltjie konfyt [Muscat Grape Jam]

It’s good with
The Delaire Graff Banghoek Reserve Chardonnay 2017 is a great partner to food. Anything really from sashimi, ceviche, prawns, smoked chicken or angelfish paté. Both the Delaire Graff Restaurant and Indochine on the Estate are ‘well worth the visit’. Thought you would like to have my recipe for Snoek or Angelfish Paté, such a lovely snack dish late afternoon with a crisp baguette or Melba Toast, or at the start of a meal. I have served this in Bahrain and in the Western Australian Winelands in Margaret River where it has been happily received. We used Hamour, a lovely firm fleshed and pretty fish in Bahrain where the Gulf Hotel Chefs smoked the fish in the hotel’s kitchen. We used Smoked Tasmanian Salmon in Margaret River. Click herefor my recipe.

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about

As a young aspiring chef, Michael laid a solid foundation for his career at the Cordon Bleu Cooking School in London. Over the next 30 years he had a series of high profile hospitality management posts, was the Public Relations Manager for Boschendal and ran three successful restaurants in the Cape, one of which, Parks, featured in the national top 10 restaurants.

Michael is a family man, author and broadcaster.

A lifetime devoted to the promotion and appreciation of the South African wine and food industry has earned him many accolades, including the Lannice Snyman Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 Eat Out Awards.

Michael continues to be prolific, informative and entertaining on his wine and food website, michaelolivier.co.za